Ideas & Trends For A Good Retirement: Find Work. Good Luck!
Bill Neugent, an engineer in McLean, Va., is doing his bit to ease the looming generational financial squeeze as the nation’s 75 million baby boomers begin to retire. He’s working longer.
Mr. Neugent, 62, plans to work full time until he is 65 and then part time for the Mitre Corporation, a federal research contractor that encourages older workers to stay on.
There are, it seems, too few such workers and employers. The average retirement age for men now is 63 and for women 62. But the emphatic conclusion of recent research into retirement policy and labor markets is that working another two or three years would have a surprisingly powerful impact on the retirement living standards of millions of boomers and on the economy.
The economic gains, according to a report published this month by the McKinsey Global Institute, a research group, would include increased household savings, higher tax collections and a reduction of the fiscal strain on Social Security and Medicare; together, that would add an estimated $13 trillion to the economy by 2025, or about a year’s total output of goods and services today.
“It’s the only answer, but don’t count on the story turning out that way,” said Alicia H. Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College and co-author, with Steven A. Sass, of the book “Working Longer: The Solution to the Retirement Income Challenge” (Brookings Institution Press). “It’s going to take a lot of education and changes in policy and attitudes.” More.
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